We stood shapeless in front of the counter and he didn’t like that. Seconds after storming through the entrance, he raised his arms at the ten of us and punctured the silence of the last five minutes: “I know we’re in Seattle and lines don’t matter here but somebody tell me where the hell I'm supposed to stand.”

He was six-feet-tall, and narrow, with thinning black hair and a salty five o’clock shadow. The royal blue t-shirt he wore had short enough...